Jack Dini

Searching For Wind Turbines that Don't Kill Birds and Bats

Wind turbines overall kill some 573,000 birds per year including 83,000 birds of prey. (1) Yet in December 2013, the Obama Administration announced an extension of the existing five-year eagle take permit. Effective immediately, the new rule issued by the Department of Interior will grant 30-year permits allowing wind farms to 'accidentally kill federally protected eagles,' The 'rule' is in direct violation of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act passed by Congress in 1940. As Marita Noon says, “once again, executive action trumps the law.” (2)

Solar's Demise in China

China's aggressive push to 'green' economy and become the world leader in renewable energy has hit a road block. The country's solar panel industry, which went from zero to become the world's largest in five years, has crashed, with most producers now suffering from negative profit margins, soaring debt levels and idle factories. (1)

Questioning Science Research

Pharmaceutical companies find that test results favoring new drugs typically disappear when the tests are repeated. Bayer found that two-thirds of such findings couldn't be reproduced, and Amgen scientists, following up on 53 studies that at first glance looked worth pursuing, could confirm only six of them.

China's Research Problem

Chinese researchers are not very well compensated compared to their Western counterparts. However, they can increase their income by a factor of 10 with a single publication. The better the journal they publish in, as judged by the average number of times that its papers are cited, the more money they make.

A Science Journal Sting

Want to get your work published in a scientific journal? No problem if you have a few thousand dollars you are willing to part with.

Wood- An Imperfect Biomass

The largest, so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is not solar power or wind power, but wood. As The Economist reports, “In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass) accounts for about half of Europe's renewable energy consumption.

Maldives and Tuvalu- Not Disappearing

The Maldives in the Indian Ocean have long been used by global warming alarmists to drive home the dangers of rising sea levels should polar ice sheets keep melting because of man-made global warming. In 2012 former President of the Maldive Islands, Mohammed Nasheed, said, “If carbon emissions continue at the rate they are climbing today, my country will be under water in seven years.” (1)

Coffee, Perfumes and Civets

There's a myth that synthetic chemicals are naturally more dangerous than natural ones but it simply isn't true. Every moment of our lives we are exposed to a vast assay of environmental chemicals, all of which—whether synthetically or naturally occurring—can cause harm in sufficient quantity.

Home Energy Efficiency—Much Room for Improvement

Today, the average American household uses seven times as much electricity as it did in 1950. (1) And our use of this energy source is not very efficient. An analysis published last month by the Lawrence Livermore National laboratory (LLNL) suggests that the USA is just 39% energy efficient. Put another way, more than half (61%) of the energy that flows through our economy is ultimately wasted. (2)

Polar Bears Are Doing Quite Well

Zac Unger was a firm believer in the much-touted news that polar bears were declining. To further substantiate what he had been hearing, he spent three months in Churchill with his family doing research for his book. (1) If you haven't heard, Churchill is the place to go to see polar bears. Its located on the west shore of Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada, and is most famous for the many polar bears that move toward the shore from inland in the autumn, leading to the nickname 'Polar Bear Capital of the world.' This has put Churchill on the map, helping its growing tourism industry.

An Inconsistent Truth- A Film Worth Seeing

The IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on climate Change) just presented its most recent assessment report, the fifth in 23 years. It has chosen to deliberately attempt to obscure the reality of an ongoing temperature standstill and the failure of its models. The editor-in-chief of the Basler Zeitung, Markus Somm, said this about the report, “It appears defensive. It is a masterpiece of dosed prophecy. Had Moses taken the same approach, he would not have convinced a single Jew to leave Egypt. In no paper from science or politics have I read the word 'probable' or improbable' so often.” (1) The report is another attempt to deceive people into believing that the world is at risk from rising temperatures, but the reality is that for at least sixteen years, the Earth has been in a cooling cycle and is likely to continue to cool for decades to come. (2)

Hydrazine: A bomb in our stomachs: A rocket fuel: A cancer cure

Chemophobia is a term meaning an irrational fear of chemicals in the environment: that no matter how tiny an exposure one faces, the chemical is to be avoided at all costs. Such fears are unnecessary and baseless, given the fact that we are all made of 'chemicals.' Every piece of food we eat, every breath we take, every move we make results in the ingestion of a chemical of some sort.

Renewable Energy Not So Energetic

Renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar have been under development since the 1980s so it is appropriate to review progress and look into the future to see what these technologies may be able to offer.

Confusion on Climate Change

Although we have been enmeshed in a long debate over global warming and climate change, there has been no warming for over 16 years. (1)

Wine Tasting and Fancy Descriptions

“Taste—as in personal preference, discernment—is subjective. It's ephemeral, shaped by trends and fads. It's one part mouth and nose, two parts ego. Even flavors that professional evaluators agree are 'defects' can come to signify superior taste,” says Mary Roach in her new book, Gulp. “Because it's hard for people to gauge quality by flavor, they tend to gauge it by price. That's a mistake. Sue Langstaff has evaluated wine professionally for twenty years. In her opinion, the difference between a $500 bottle and one that costs $30 is largely hype.” (1)

Plastic Bags: More Environmental Fad Than Environmental Benefit?

San Francisco passed America's first in the nation ban on plastic bags in chain grocery stores in 2007. More recently, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright from the Wharton School Institute for Law and Economics, analyzed state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food borne illness deaths and discovered that the San Francisco ban led to an increase in infections immediately upon implementation. They found a 46 percent rise in food borne illness deaths. (1)

Obama’s Fossil Fuel Folly

Coal by 2030 will be the most widely used fuel worldwide as developing countries electrify burgeoning cities and rural areas where billions of people have had little or no access to power. (1)

Lipstick and Makeup Product Scares

Regulations abound concerning the use of chemicals in cosmetic products. But regardless, various groups will tell you of the 'toxicity' of personal products we use on our bodies.

America Dominates the World in Higher Education- But Could Use More Jobs

One way to measure a country's scientific impact is to determine how many of the world's top universities are located there. US News & World Report publishes such a list annually. In 2010, the United States had thirty-one of the top one hundred universities, far more than any other country. (1)

Durango, Colorado—‘Chemical-Free’ Parks But Lots Of Smoke

Durango, Colorado, has some 'chemical-free' parks. It also has a famous narrow-gauge steam railroad that emits a lot of smoke. Somehow, 'chemical-free' and smoke seem like opposite ends of the environmental spectrum.